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Recent Innovations in Chemical Engineering, 2015, 8, 75-86 ISSN: 2405-5204 eISSN: 2405-5212
A Bibliometric Analysis of Recent Arab Countries Research Activities in Renewable Energy (1966-2014)
Samar Jaber1, Aiman Eid Al-Rawajfeh2,3* and Hossam Etawi3
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Mechanical Engineering Department, American University of Madaba, Madaba, Jordan; 2Chemical Engineering Department, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan; 3Chemical Engineering Department, Tafila Technical University, P.O. Box 179, Tafila 66110, Jordan
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Abstract: A comprehensive analysis of the growth of research activity has been conducted in the field of “Renewable Energy” originating from Arab countries. A bibliometric analysis based on databases Scopus was carried out to follow research activities in this field during the period from 1966-2014. Both quantitative and qualitative perceptions were taken into consideration. This study will improve the understanding of research trends in disciplines related to Renewable Energy. A total of 1,620 documents were published from Arab world. The highest number of articles associated with “Renewable Energy” was from Egypt (20.6%), followed by Saudi Arabia (16.7%). The maximum number of citations was 244 for a paper from Oman. The most productive journal was Renewable Energy. The study identified 723 (44.6%) papers with Arab-foreign country collaborations. The most productive institution was Centre de Developpement des Energies Renouvelables, Algeria. The authors declare that these results are up to the date of 2014, may be some researchers have more publications but it did not appear in the search because not all journals are included in Scopus and some others, and even included in the database, some of its volumes are not included yet.
Revised: December 08, 2015
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Received: March 21, 2015
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Keywords: Arab world, Bibliometric analysis, Renewable Energy, Scientific activity, Scopus, Statistical analysis.
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Accepted: May 25, 2016
Bibliometric analysis is the analysis of large numbers of scientific documents for technology forecasting. It is a very useful tool since it can summarize document characteristics into tables for statistical analysis [1-4]. Furthermore, it gives a clear picture of the current state of scientific research in specific areas and allocates researchers [5]. This type of analysis is used to obtain bibliographical works within a given field, topic, institute, or country by utilizing quantitative analysis and statistics [4, 6, 7]; It is also used to make pronouncements about qualitative pictures of scientific activities [4, 6, 8].
Various studies have been conducted on analyzing scientific research productivity at a worldwide level in different disciplines [9-20]. Chio and Hu performed a bibliometric analysis of all tsunamirelated publications in the Science Citation Index (SCI) [9]. Moreover Hz et al. used Science Citation Index (SCI) to evaluate the current trends of solid waste research. Document type, language, publication output, distribution of journals, subject category, countries, institutes, title-words, author keywords, and 'Keywords Plus' were analyzed [10]. This research was followed by another bibliometric study of solid waste research during 1991-2010. This time authors used Science Citation Index Expanded [21].
*Address correspondence to this author at the Chemical Engineering Department, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan, Tel: +96265355000, Fax: +96265355522; E-mail:
[email protected]
Fu et al. carried out a bibliometric analysis of drinking water field. This study was based on the Science Citation Index Expanded from the Web of Science from 1992 to 2011 [11]. On the other hand, Wang et al. designed a study to evaluate the
1. INTRODUCTION
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Recent Innovations in Chemical Engineering
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© 2015 Bentham Science Publishers
Recent Innovations in Chemical Engineering, 2015, Vol. 8, No. 2
global scientific output in the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) subject category of “water resources” for the past 16 years [17].
As evident from the open literature, different bibliometric studies have been carried out in different fields around the world. By reviewing the literature, and to the best of my knowledge, there is a lack of data regarding the evaluation of scientific output in the field of renewable energy at Arab world level. Thus, the main objective of this study is to highlight the evolution of scientific research in “Renewable Energy” field in Arab countries by measuring and analyzing the Arab productivity of research in the aforementioned field. This analysis is done based on data extracted from Scopus database. Therefore, it will guide policy-makers to appraise the cooperation achievement and draw an international cooperation roadmap for the future. To authors’ knowledge, there are no previous bibliometric analysis at the Arabic world level (Mashriq and Maghreb) for research activities in “Renewable Energy”.
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Grossi et al. provided a worldwide information on the geography of clinical cancer research. This research could reflect the economic and human resources involved in this field [12]. ChinchillaRodríguez et al. conducted a bibliometric analysis to define the patterns of international medical research in Latin America and the Caribbean. The main aim of this study is to ascertain countries’ capacity to establish intra- and extraregional scientific collaboration [22]. Chinchilla-Rodríguez et al. carried out another study to characterize the volume and visibility of Latin American scientific output in the area of public health, through a combined analysis of bibliometric, socioeconomic and health indicators of the top ten Latin American producers of documents [23].
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2. METHODOLOGY
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A bibliometric analysis was carried out for samples of 1781 studies about environmental impact assessment from 1973-2009 [18]. On the other hand, Li and Zhao conducted a bibliometric analysis to study about 113,468 samples on environmental assessment from 1993-2012. Growth trends, subject, journals, international collaboration, geographic distribution of publications, and scientific research issues were addressed [24].
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In this study, bibliometric analysis was based on data gathered from Scopus databases during the period from 1966-2014. The scientific research from 2015 was excluded because some papers could be under review or at the editing procedures. In addition, all search components have been carried out within one time interval in order to eliminate any bias which may occur because of daily updating of Scopus database. The following analysis has been done on February 25th, 2015.
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Li et al. considered a recent research hotspots on global Parkinson's disease during the period of 1991-2006 by using the papers from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) [13]. An overview of the research from 13 Middle Eastern Arab (MEA) countries in the toxicology journals was analyzed by Zyoud [14]. Sweileh et al. examined the quantity and quality of biomedical and medical research published from Palestine [15].
Two bibliometric analyses were carried out for the chemical Renewable Energy discipline based on the online version of Science Citation Index Expanded. The first was done in US from 2002 to 2010 by Zhu et al. [25], while the second was investigated in China during 1992-2011 by Fu et al. [26]. Zhu et al. pointed that energy & environment, nanoscale science, and biochemistry had an increasing trend during the recent 9 years [25]. However, Fu et al. showed that the hot research has been photo-catalysis, adsorption, and synthesis in the past two decades [26].
The word “Renewable energy” in general in four languages (French, German, and Arabic) has been entered into the Scopus search engine as article titles, abstracts, and keywords. The time period before 2015 was chosen to reflect the current state analysis. All Arab countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Algeria, Comoros, Morocco, Tunisia, Djibouti, Libya Arab Jamahiriya, Syrian Arab Republic, Mauritania, Oman, and Somalia were used as country keys. The final formula which has been written in the advanced search for article titles, abstracts, and keywords related to Renewable Energy was as follows; TITLE-ABS-KEY ("renewable energy" OR "Regenerative Energien" OR "énergies renouvel") AND PUBYEAR > 1965 ables" OR " AND PUBYEAR
